Self-Publishing Secrets: 5 Free Amazon Services That Will Help You Sell More Books

While nearly everyone has heard of Amazon, fewer people know about all of its free services that benefit independent authors. If you self-publish your work, make sure you’re aware of these programs and tools that can maximize your book’s impact.

Selling through Amazon is common among independent authors. Amazon is the largest online book retailer, and people trust it: millions of buyers have their credit card and shipping information already saved on their accounts (hello, one-click-to-buy!).

The downside of selling on Amazon is authors don’t get access to customer information (like name and email addresses) and the royalties are lower than selling directly through an author website using services such as , or .

If you’re willing to give up the above for a potentially higher sales volume, then here are the five main services at your disposal, for free, to get your book onto Amazon.com as an ebook or paperback.

KDP

is a way for any indie author to sell their ebooks on Amazon.com (or other Amazon country websites). Authors get 35% or 70% royalties, depending on the ebook’s list price and where it’s sold.

KDP uses the mobi digital format, which is different from most other digital retailers, which use ePub. Your ebook needs to be formatted specifically for their platform, but they accept and convert Doc, ePub, RTF and a few other formats. If you’d prefer to convert the file yourself, free apps like or Amazon’s convert from Doc, HTML and ePub to mobi. users can convert directly into mobi using the “Compile” function.

Formatting your ebook perfectly can be a headache, but here’s .

After uploading, use to see the final version of your ebook before it’s published, so you can go back, make changes and re-upload. For more advice and resources, check out or the massive .

A lot of authors and readers aren’t aware that you don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle ebook. They work and read well on any tablet (like iPads) or smartphone with the . My personal favourite way of reading ebooks is from any web browser on my computer, using Amazon’s .

KDP Select

While authors can upload ebooks to KDP and still sell the same ebook anywhere else on the Internet, Amazon also offers for authors who agree to 90 days of digital exclusivity. In return KDP Select pays higher royalties for sales in certain countries, adds your ebook to the lending library for Prime Members, and gives you promotional options to make your ebook free for up to five days or discounted for up to seven.

The promotional options are the best reason to use KDP Select, and why I use it. When your ebook is free or discounted, it appears on sales pages on Amazon.com — which drives more people to buy it.

Other websites also promote free or discounted Kindle ebooks to massive audiences; is the largest, with over two million subscribers. While Bookbub and other larger promotion websites aren’t free, it can often be worth the price to put your book in front of a much larger audience. There are also lots of smaller, free Kindle discount promotion websites; here’s a .

Most indie authors see huge sales days when their ebooks are discounted and massive download days when those ebooks are free. These results often lead to higher-than-usual sales on the days right after promotions (when it’s back to regular price), as well as a bigger audience for future ebooks.

CreateSpace

is Amazon’s print-on-demand service for indie authors. It lets you sell a paperback copy of your book either on CreateSpace.com website or directly from Amazon.com. All you have to do is upload and set the book; they’ll take care of printing and shipping. You don’t even pay for your book to be printed — you simply collect a commission whenever it sells.

You design a cover (or have CreateSpace design one for an extra fee) and upload your content in PDF format. Once it’s uploaded, you can download a “proof” copy, view it directly on the website, or even order a physical copy. That way, you can make any necessary changes before it’s published.

CreateSpace also lets you link a digital or Kindle version of your book to the paperback, which allows purchasers to choose their format on the same sales page. It takes a bit of work to set this up, but it’s free and easier after you’ve done it once. I didn’t think print was worth it for years, but as soon as I started offering paperback copies of my ebooks through CreateSpace, I noticed that they made up 10% of my sales.

Amazon Associates

If you’re not familiar, is a service that pays you for linking to products on Amazon.com. It uses a tracking ID in each URL to identify who directed the buyer to the site.

Use this link when promoting your own books and make an extra four to eight percent on each sale – it’s not against the rules. That’s money Amazon would have kept otherwise! You also get commissions from anything someone buys on Amazon.com if they got there from your initial link.

On average, I make a few hundred dollars each month from my affiliate account, because every time I link to my books from my website, newsletter or social media, I use Amazon Associates URLs.

Amazon Author Central

Even as an indie author, Amazon lets you create an that attaches to your ebook’s sales page. You can share your background, your blog’s RSS feed (so it grabs new posts), upcoming speaking or book-signing events, and even your latest tweets.

Your Author Central page appears on every book sales page on Amazon, so it cross-links other books you’ve published. If someone clicks over to your author page, they can even subscribe to you and get emails when you release new books.

is a web designer and bestselling author who’s obsessed with nature and hairless rats. His latest book, , is a guide to freelancing as a creative professional (without living on ramen noodles or settling for bad clients), and is obviously available on .

20 comments

Yes, I’ve used all of the above. But it hasn’t led to sales. Ultimately, you have to promote your book. I just hired a PR company and someone to help me with social media because putting your book out there on KDP or anywhere else doesn’t seem to be enough…

Hi Claudia, have you tried setting your book free? That lead to 39,000 downloads in a few days for me. Obviously zero income from it, but afterwards the sales were quite high. And of course, none of the tools I mentioned above are promotion, they’re in place for when you promote your book.

There are several guides out there about getting a publicity boost for your book. They mostly involve giving it away for free to get reviews, then bumping the price up once there’s some buzz on the books’ page.

Many thanks for sharing this highly explanatory post! I am on KDP Select and have done 2 free promos since February which resulted in just under 2,000 downloads with virtually no paid advertising. My next step is to give it a go with Createspace. I am frustrated that I don’t have significant sales as yet despite my continuous presence on Twitter and regular blogging but I am pressing on. Obviously I am doing something wrong here or maybe there is still a lot to learn. Thank you especially for explaining about Associates. I presume this is the ‘Amazon affiliate links’ that experienced authors keep talking about. Sounds like something I must start doing immediately as through Twitter, I drive a lot of traffic to Amazon from what I see on my bitly reports! Once again, I am grateful – many thanks!

Thank you for responding to my comments, Heather. No, funnily enough there is no significant result in sales. I also have the impression people download free books by the dozens and have them backed up on their Kindles for later. I haven’t had a single new review since my promos as yet! Even one reader who approached me herself on Facebook full of admiration, declaring she will read the book again from the start, didn’t add a review. I had to ask her nicely in order to support my efforts, and only then she did… Not sure what I am doing wrong but hopefully if I give it time, I’ll start reaping significant benefits sometime.

It may be something that takes time, and there’s no secret formula for certain success. Some Kindle experts love free downloads for the lead-in to later sales, while others dislike that option as it doesn’t result in reviews (e.g. Steve Scott). It depends on your goals, your audience, your platform and your niche.

Thank you for all of this very useful advice. I have actually already published on CreateSpace but had forgotten to register with Amazon’s Author Central. So thanks for the reminder. I’m now registered!

After publishing 7 ebooks on the Amazon Kindle platform I started looking at other ways to increase my income from writing ebooks, so I joined a publishing start up in China by the name of

They handle everything including translation, promotion, listing on all the various sites, keep check of of sales and for free ( the royalty split heavily in their favour )

It can be a bit of a slow burner from uploading your original manuscript through to the final translation being completed but you will get there in the end, it was an overall quicker process on my 2nd book that I uploaded compared to the 1st attempt.

The royalty split is normally 70/30 in their favour, but I think I would have never sold any books in China without their help so in my humble opinion , 30% is better than zero…

I thought Amazon expressly forbade putting affiliate links in emails like newsletters. I’ve read that several times and looked it up and they seem pretty serious about it. Here’s one article about it but I’ve seen many. It seems like one of those things where a lot of people get away with it for a time but Amazon cuts all ties with people they catch.

It is great to think that people are shopping for books on Create Space and other content. It seems like Create Space gets a bad wrap these days from reviewers and critics. The impression I get is some people like it and others do not like the layout.

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